St Kilda Film Festival In Conversation with Richard J Frankland
History
Location
St Kilda Town Hall
Start date
2019-06-26
End date
2019-06-26
Research statement
Background
The multiplicity of needs for First Nation voice covers a broad range. Some of these films that I present, such as No Way To Forget and Harry’s War were made around the Renaissance period of First Nation filmmaking, when we wanted to tell our stories through our eyes and had to take aggressive political measures to do so. This action was in itself a trauma. The trauma of exclusion by institutions and by Western Eurocentric society, in the facilitation and telling of our stories, was very strong at that period, and, in many ways, is still very strong now.
Contribution
The second level is the content of the stories itself. Harry’s War, for instance, depicts the contribution of First Nation people at a time when we were not regarded as human, as citizens or as contributors to the fabric of this nation, as soldiers. A lot of people did not realize in broader Australia that First Nation people contributed to the Australian Imperial forces. The other level is us being regarded as humans, so by our films, humanizing what has been dehumanized, such as in No Way To Forget, First Nation Investigator investigating the deaths of his own family and friends in custody, from my own experience, humanizes us.
Significance
This type of challenge to the social engineering of a nation's lens on us as a First Nations people does several things. It humanizes us that humanizes what has been dehumanizes and it assists us in planting seeds here in the present by recognizing the past so that we can chart a way forward.